…end somewhere in here and that is where we are going to come up with joinery to fit that spot. So, once I am at this point, I literally will erase and refine, and erase and refine until I get it the way I wanted to look. And, you know, a lot of times you need to walk away from it. You get to a point where you just—you know it is not perfect, but you are as far as you can go right now. Okay, so you step away from it. Walk away, do something else. Maybe, you even have someone in the family come over and take a look and say, “What do you think, looks awful about this? Should this be thicker? Should it be more severe of a curve here?” And, you would be amazed about how much you can get information-wise from other people, just getting their opinions on what it looks right. Most people may not be able to put it words, but a lot of people will recognize when something lacks the proportions that it should have and you want to go on those gap feelings when you do this.
So, once you have your basic shape down on your template material, cut it down in a Ben saw, keep it about, you know, maybe eighth or a sixteenth inch over the line and then I take it over to the oscillating spindle sander, and clean up and furnish those curves. Now, if your curves do not feel completely, smooth and you want them to be, you can heat it with either something like a flexible sanding strip. This is just a very thin piece of oak, strake run oak with some sand paper attached to it with double stick tape. You can even use a file or something like this which is a rasp. Sort of, finesse those curves and get rid of those little lumps left by the oscillating spindle sander.
What I want to do is use a piece of quarter inch Baltic birch, a sort of a giant work space to make a life size drawing of what the profile of the table is going to look like. I mean, this is great, this is one leg and this gets us pretty far, but sometimes, visually, things change when there is another leg on this side. You ma decide, you do not like the effect that you have created with your curves. And you might need to make a little change here or there. So, this is a critical step before you make any final decisions.
Okay. So, I will take my template. Well, actually, draw it on the face of this piece. Once I have the once side drawn, I actually flip it over, make sure I put my end piece at the total width that I want this table. It is going to be about 20 inches, that is how I know where I placed it. And then, I am essentially tracing on the mirror image of this work piece so that I can then step away and look at the piece as a whole. Is this the kind of look that I want to go for? I also, want to make sure that I use my little angle guide here and determine what the best angle is for this center structures because of that in of itself is going to become a separate part that I am going to need to cut out later on, and I may even want to make a template for that as well.
All right. So, I have used the sharp T instead of just a pencil. See, you guys can see it a little bit more clearly. So what is going to happen here, I got the sort of, I do not know. Kind of looks like the Indianapolis cult’s symbol. Yes, maybe, I should have not done that. But, the overall, it is kind of get the effect that I am going for. Again, a line of these details, I have yet to be worked out. So, you know, things can be finesse and thinned out, maybe add a little curvature in there. Whatever is going to look at the time, but it is not setting stone yet. So, I do not have to worry about it.
Over the top, we are going to have a recess cut, and at the top of each leg, and then a solid top is going to sit in place like that. So, I am pretty happy with the way this looks so far, and I think we can proceed with cutting a sample leg. Now, I actually, already made a sample. You do not necessarily have to, but if you have the time and the material to do that, I really recommend it. It tells you a lot about the work piece that you cannot get from a two-dimensional drawing. You may, at this point, even still come up with something that you think really needs to be adjusted in your template and better to find it now than after you have cut your final working material for the table legs.
Okay, but a few things that you want to keep in mind here, we have not really talked much about joinery. Now, at some point, we are going to have, to have joinery between this leg and this piece here. Okay, what I mean visioning, is just a traditional mortise tenon, perhaps in this case, maybe even a loose tenon. I am not 100% sure what I want to do there yet, but I know I need to figure it out before I cut this leg out. Because, you know, this is nice and flat and when this is a full piece of lumber, you know, like this would be a blank. It is going to be very easy to create a mortise in this piece, but try creating a mortise in this and, you know, you are going to get a, quite a challenge on your hands. So, it is important to have this down but make sure that you understand, we do need to resolve that joinery issue before we start cutting or legs out.
So, I got the design that I like, I got a nice solid template, and I have got a pretty good idea of where this project is headed. Now, keep in mind that even at this stage, I do not have a complete picture of what this table is going to look like, or how it is even going to be put together. There are still some joinery unknown as far as I am concern, that I am going to develop as I go. Now, that may not work for everybody. Some people may like to have this all worked out ahead of time and make sure they know every piece of the puzzle for the entire project. In general, I do not have enough time to do that. That may require me to make a complete mark up of the project. We evaluate it and go back and do it again, and this is not the way that I work.
So, for me, it is important to be flexible, to adjust on the fly. And I got to tell you some of my best design choices have come about by accidents. There have been times when I had screwed something up or I drilled too far or I make something, and I all of a sudden go, “Wait a minute. I could use an in-leg to fix this.” And now, that in-leg becomes an inner part of that design. So, I actually find design opportunities coming out of accidents. So, not that necessarily promote doing that, but that just may happen. So it is important to be able to be flexible and adjust on the fly as problems arise.
Okay. So, decide what the right method is for you and do whatever it works for you. For me, I would have it no other way. I would love flying by to see to my plans and just seeing what a project turns into. So, next time, what we are going to do is not only, cut up the legs, but we are going to start talking about this joint here between the cross piece and the leg itself. What the best joint is? Why I am using it? And then, of course, we will probably able to cut the joint and then cut out the leg itself.
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